Jason's Blog

I suppose one of Murphy’s laws could be, “The more you need a piece of technology, the more likely it is for it to break.” I have experienced that on this weekend. Not only with one items, but two as a matter of fact. First, my iPod is in for minor repairs which will take two weeks longer than a mistake on BestBuy’s part. Secondly, my laptop harddrive decided this weekend would be the perfect time to fail. Both of these items I really needed for my long trip this weekend, yet I’m having to cope without both. Oh well.

I do love tech support however, I tried to call Sony up since I wanted to replace my laptop harddrive ASAP, and needed to know if a new harddrive was compatable with an older standard on my laptop. A simple question with a simple “yes” or “no” answer… at least so I thought. My conversation with Sony went something like this:

Me: I need to replace my laptop harddrive. Are newer ATA-6 harddrives compatable with the ATA-5 standard on my laptop?

Sony: (Some mumbo jumbo about how they can’t provide support for new hardware, even though I only asked a simple question that could be solved with such a simple answer)

– Here I explained the problem I have, the steps I tooked to come to the solution that my harddrive no longer works.

Sony: You need to [some steps to reinstall Windows] and [some more steps].

Me: I can’t even follow those steps, because the bios doesn’t even recognize the harddrive.

Sony: Then you need a new drive.

Me: … (Internal Thoughts: Well d’oh. )

I decided at this point, I would be better off with my time spent on google, and sure enough I found the answer within 2 minutes. It frustrates me to no end that tech support can not answer such a simple question reguarding their product. Customer service should be just that, service, and should not feel like a diservice to the very customers you are supposed to be serving.

I have bought a new drive already. It is a good thing though, even though my old harddrive went bad. I’ll have a lot more space for doing things (2x the space infact) and might even try to install Linux. Who knows?

It’s been a few days, so I felt like something should go here. It’ll probably be mostly random.

I don’t really have anything to ramble about, I suppose things have been going pretty well so far, although busy. Only one more week of school before finals… it’s so hard to believe. People keep asking me what I’m going to do when I graduate… and I don’t really know at this point. I mean, other than the obvious (get a job, get married, have a family, etc.), I don’t really know. A lot of things have yet to fall into place and I’m not at a point in time where I can make judgments on certain things. To think that the rest of my life depends on decisions I make in the next 6 months… it’s mind boggling and overwhelming. I try not to think about it too much.

Although, I feel like I have a lot of things to say but really don’t have anyone to say them to. There are things I’d like to ramble about at the very least, but don’t want to burden anyone with my troubles. It’s odd how I like to help other people as much as I can but I almost hardly allow anyone to help me. Is that really so wrong? Certainly it can’t be good to keep everything to yourself, but at the same time who would really want to listen?

This week, I’ve felt really old all of a sudden and I’m not exactly sure why. Sure, 22 isn’t really that old but it almost seems that way. Maybe it’s because it’s my last year of school. Maybe it’s because I thought life would be different at 22 (when I was younger). Maybe… who knows?

This next week should be even more hectic than the previous. I have at least 2 group type projects in the works for COSC along with a Japanese final coming up. Not to mention my other finals next week. Thank goodness for Christmas break.

I’ve been considering stopping the “journal” aspect of this site and just posting interesting links/videos I find on the internet. It seems pointless to post here if no one is reading, and if they’re really interested in what’s going on they can always ask me. I don’t know, I’m kind of indifferent about it, and I may not do it, but I’m considering it at the very least…

I’m in a little bit of a dilemma. For all you Samford folks out there (or even you non-Samford folks) I’m trying to decide what classes to take in the spring. I pretty much have some classes set in stone, Senior Seminar for COSC, Artificial Intelligence, Japanese 202, Wind Ensemble, and Scuba Diving. That’s all fine and great, except that’s only about 13 hours. I still need one more science class, and one more upper level course (anything).

Now here’s my dilemma. For my upper level course, I’m split between taking University Chorale again or taking Class Woodwinds. The advantage of Class Woodwinds is that it’s only 2 days a week (M & W) while UC is 3 days a week with additional commitments. Although, Dr. Price is taking over UC so it would be pretty spiffy to have him as director. Any suggestions?

My other dilemma is over science. Now I’ve already taken Physical Geography, and Introduction to Computer Science won’t work either since COSC is already my major. I really wanted to take Astronomy, but it kind of conflicts with my Senior Seminar class, so unless I get Senior Seminar moved, Astronomy is out of the question. So my other options are: Scientific Methods, Animal Biology, Organic/General/Biological Chemistry, or General Physics. Out of those, I really don’t know what’s good (or who’s good for that matter) but would like something that’s at least not too difficult. If you’ve taken any of those classes or know someone who has, please post any suggestions or comments you might have via the comment link in the title of the post!

Augh. I just want to scream. I’m still working on the same project for Current Topics, although I’m actually finally nearing completion. I’m so close to finishing that it’s painful. I’ve literally worked on this thing all day with help from both Dr. Toone and Dr. Donaldson. I’ll just be glad to finally get this thing behind me and move on…

And to top it all off I’ve been fighting really horrible allergies for the past month or so and nothing I take really seems to help. The last time I went to the doctor, he gave me some sort of shot which made me feel great for a couple of days until it wore off. I think I just might go again if it doesn’t improve within the next week or two…

I’m really frustrated right now. Argh. I’ve been working on this stupid project for current topics for quite a while and I feel like I’m making no progress… I’ve pretty much worked on it all day Saturday, Sunday, and today at least whenever I’ve had free time. I really am no where close to being finished and it’s due tomorrow. I’m just extremely angry and I don’t know what to do about it.

I’m thinking it may just be worth it to turn this thing in for partial credit rather than try and finish it now… It’s already 18 pages long of text so if that’s not worth something… then I don’t know what is!